


Difficult Questions

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Nanny Knows Best [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Complicated Relationships, Gardener Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 16:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19467790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: This is the problem with children, of course.They ask difficult questions.





	Difficult Questions

It was a sunny day outside, and Crowley leaned back in his seat, leaning his chin on his hand. His elbow was settled on the arm of the chair, and outside he could see Aziraphale moving back and forth, his hand loosely gripped around a shovel. It had been… What, seven years now? And he still didn’t know the first thing about gardening.

The knowledge didn’t seem to be forthcoming.

He did have a sort of glow about him, though, working out in the garden, and as awkward as he could be with the boy, Crowley did know he _cared_. And there was something in that, Crowley supposed, something that Crowley didn’t necessarily want to acknowledge, a sort of seed of tenderness that kept catching in his chest.

They’d be going, soon. Warlock’s seventh birthday was coming up, and the Dowlings would want to get him a tutor, rather than keeping a nanny on. They’d talked about it, about acting the tutors, as well, but it would be better to send agents, he thought. Best not get too attached.

Or be too close to the boy when he exploded.

But Warlock… The boy was too normal. No sign of even developing infernal powers, no sign of _anything_ , and Crowley was beginning to suspect there was something wrong, something afoot, but what? Could it be that the whole plan had been thrown off the rails, that just having him between them had made him—

“Nanny?”

Crowley turned his head away.

“Warlock,” he said softly, looking at the boy. There were tears on his cheeks, and Crowley leaned forward, putting out his arms and letting Warlock throw himself against his chest, pressing his face into the black wool of Crowley’s cardigan, heaving a hitched little gasp. “My dear boy, what’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” Warlock mumbled, and squeezed Crowley as tightly as he could with his little arms. Crowley inhaled, slowly, and he gently stroked the boy’s hair, feeling how soft it was. It was getting long again – Mr Dowling hated for the boy’s hair to be too long. “Can I sit in your lap?”

“Oh,” Crowley murmured, feeling his chest give a little pang, “you don’t think you’re getting a bit old to be sitting in Nanny’s lap?”

Warlock looked up at him with such a stricken look on his face that Crowley melted instantly, and he put his hands on the boy’s waist, lifting him up into his lap in the armchair and pulling him against his chest. His hands moved instinctively, following some pattern that had come to him as soon as he first looked at a child: he wrapped one arm around Warlock’s body, the other carding gently through his hair as he cradled the back of his head, his lips brushing the top of it.

“What’s wrong?” Crowley asked softly, and he wished they were upstairs in Nanny’s domain, rather than down here in the toy room, where the rocking chair was, where he could move a soothing rhythm on the chair beneath them like waves beneath a boat, coax the boy into relaxing that way. “Did _that man_ say something stupid to you again?”

“No,” Warlock sniffled. “Brother Francis hasn’t been stupid at all today.”

“Well, I don’t believe _that_ ,” Crowley purred, and he felt the barest hint of relief when Warlock released a snuffling laugh, his fingers gripping loosely at the lapel of Crowley’s cardigan. How could this boy be the Antichrist? A little spoilt, perhaps, a little stupid at times, but no more than any other little boys. How could this boy destroy the world? “Why don’t you tell me, darling? What upset my little boy, hm?”

“Does Mommy love me?”

Crowley froze, his lips still pressed against the top of the boy’s head, his gaze forward. He scarcely dared to breathe before he asked, slowly, deliberately, “Why would you ask that?”

“Dunno.”

“My dear child, I do so hate it when you lie to Nanny.”

“ _Dunno_ ,” Warlock repeated, with more injected indignation, this time, but when Crowley waited, patiently, he finally said, “I asked her to come play my Xbox with me and she said she was busy because she’s sunbathing. She’s not even doing anything, just lying there.”

“My dear, your mother is a very busy wo—”

“She never wants me. Not ever. Not in the morning or at lunch time or at dinner or at night time or ever, not ever. And Daddy doesn’t either, but Daddy has work, and she _doesn’t_ , she just has her friends or her TV or anything else that isn’t me.”

He wished, at times, that Warlock was just a little stupider, just a little more unobservant, than he really was. He did notice things. He noticed things Crowley rather wished he wouldn’t, and he tried rapidly to think of a good response.

“She loves you,” Crowley said quietly. “I’m sorry, my dear, that she doesn’t love you so well as you deserve, but she loves you. It will all be different one day, you know. The world—”

“Yeah, I know, I’ll crush it beneath my heel, Nanny,” Warlock mumbled.

“That’s my boy.”

“You love me, don’t you, Nanny?”

They’d be leaving soon. Too old for a nanny, he was, in this new and modern world, and what would it be like, when they left? Tutors wouldn’t look after him, not like Aziraphale and Crowley did, and Crowley didn’t think they were the best parents around, but they did care for the boy, they did focus on him, they did _look_ after him. And the Dowlings didn’t mean to be so distant as they were – Crowley was aware of the constant traffic on Harriet Dowling’s mind, the stress of being married to a politician when she wanted ambitions of her own, the fear and uncertainty of raising a child, the desire to have her own life back, to be independent. It wasn’t that she resented Warlock, exactly – she resented motherhood. How many women just like her had Crowley tempted through the centuries?

Would they be leaving the boy with no parents at all?

But no, that was ridiculous – Crowley wasn’t the boy’s _mother_. He wasn’t his parent. It was—

Crowley felt slightly sick.

He held Warlock a little tighter.

“Of course I do,” he said quietly. “Of course I do, dear.”

“Am I really too big for your lap?” Warlock asked. Crowley tried to think, for the first time, when he had last seen Warlock in Mrs Dowling’s lap, or in Mr Dowling’s. They hugged him, of course, sometimes. They kissed him good night, sometimes. But when had either of them last…?

“No,” Crowley whispered. “No, not at all. Nanny was just being silly.”

\--

Later, when he and Aziraphale were alone, Aziraphale said, “We’ll have to leave soon, you know. He’s nearly seven, he’s too old for a nanny. They’ll bring it up soon—”

“We can wait another year,” Crowley said. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said. His sunglasses had been set aside, and Aziraphale looked him in the eyes, which were dark and serious, full of some turbulent emotion Aziraphale didn’t understand, didn’t even know how to ask about.

“We can’t get too attached, you know, Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly.

“More wine,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale poured.


End file.
